


My Eyes Adored You

by Lywinis



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 27+ years of fucking pining, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, M/M, Mixtape Spotify link included of course, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Stanley Uris Lives, The fic full of gay yearning boiled down into 70s and 80s on a mixtape of the author's own design
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lywinis/pseuds/Lywinis
Summary: While cleaning out his parents’ house in California to help them prep to move to their new, smaller home in Arizona, Richie finds an old cassette tape, filled with a mix tape he’d been building since the summer of 1989. He’d meant, in his foolish teenage way, to give it to Eddie before he’d left for California, but he’d chickened out at the last minute. He’d tossed it in a box and forgotten about it, but it’s still in good condition.In a fit of pique, or perhaps it’s bravery, he mails the tape to a recovering Eddie, who’s healing from Pennywise’s attack under Neibolt and simultaneously going through a rough divorce with Myra. This sets them on a path that they’d diverted from for almost thirty years. And yet, it feels as familiar as when they’d stepped off it, the ruts fitting their feet like they’re coming home.In a way, they are.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, mentioned Beverly Marsh/Ben Hanscom - Relationship
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bearfeathers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearfeathers/gifts), [birkin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birkin/gifts).



> “I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.”  
> ― David Levithan, _Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist_

**El Segundo, LA — October 2016**

Richie hauled down yet another box out of his mom’s spare closet, grunting with the weight of all the clutter the Tozier household seemed to have accumulated since he’d begun living on his own. To be fair, some of these boxes were his, and he was doing his duty by going through them, but still – how many boxes of Christmas decorations did his ma _really_ need before they started multiplying on their own like tribbles?

He still had glitter on his shirt from the first box he’d pulled down, because the aging cardboard had given out in his hands, dumping glass ornaments on his face. There was a joke there, but his ma would frown at him for it.

He’d already cleared out a majority of the furniture, the rest of it waiting on Bill, who would be here tomorrow. Sure, he could hire movers, but Richie had vowed to never give up an excuse to see one or more of the Losers again, if he could help it.

And really, what was the point of having famous writer friends if you couldn’t tap them to move your parents’ stuff?

Most everything that was scattered about was set to be donated; he just hadn’t taken out another load to the truck. They were going to make another run after lunch, and then volunteers from the church would come for the rest.

This box, though, this was one of his. He set it to the side, stretching out the kinks in his back as he sat down on the floor, intent on going through the contents. It was a part of the agreement; he would help them move house, and they would let him keep what knickknacks he wanted before donating the rest.

Maggie and Went were downsizing their house, moving from El Segundo to Yuma by the end of the year. Richie had taken time off, he told them, so that he could help them clear out the house. In reality, he didn’t have much going on, and helping shove furniture around was good for the backbreaking labor it provided, because it exhausted him. It was a good way to avoid reminding himself that he’d torpedoed his own career in September when Mike had called him back to Derry.

It was mid-October now, and the wound was still pretty sharp and fresh on his psyche. He prodded the healing edges of it relentlessly, like a dog that needed a cone so he wouldn’t lick his stitches. He was getting back to equilibrium, but it needed time, as all things do. Spending time with his parents was helping—not only was it keeping him busy, it reminded him that they’d changed as well when they moved from Derry.

He remembered the first six months in El Segundo, when he was freshly eighteen and free from Derry. It was like they’d woken up from a long dream, his mom asking him how his day was when he came home from work, like she did it every day. It had given him whiplash.

Yes, his parents had hugged him, had cared about him, but the casual affection had been missing, something he craved and sought with the Losers instead. Here in California, he began to forge a new relationship with his parents, one that kept them close. It was what had pulled him here now, sweating and swearing as he unpacked and repacked boxes, dividing them into piles for trash, donation, and keeping.

He knew how lucky he was, too; it wasn’t as though he’d hit the shit end of the parent lottery. No, that had been reserved for Eddie and Bev, and look how that had turned out. No, his parents were pretty all right, and he loved them a lot, even now.

He fielded approximately eight calls a day from Marv, his manager, who was poking at him to get back to work and resume the tour. Finally, he’d just shut off his phone and left it on the charger. He would deal with it when he was forced to deal with it, and not before. Right now, he needed time.

They’d all lost money with Richie’s little stunt, but he’d worked so hard to get where he was that most people seemed unsurprised when he claimed that it was a mental breakdown from his workload. Now, it was just up to him to get back on the horse that was telling people how much sex he had. With women.

Yeah.

He just didn’t want to go back to that. It was fake, complete and utterly made up from whole cloth. While he’d dated, he’d never dated for long, and most of the women he knew described him as funny, but lacking substance. Great material for the writers to work with, there. There was nothing of him in the act—and sure, the patter was his voice but it wasn’t at the same time. Everyone who really knew him could tell.

_I fucking knew it!_

He could hear the vicious triumph in Eddie’s voice, and it still stung quite a bit. It had left him feeling adrift, once they’d all left Derry. He could go back, try and fit into the ruts of his old life, but he wasn’t sure he could. His feet didn’t fit the path anymore.

It was hard, being honest with yourself about what you wanted.

It was hard, realizing that you didn’t like the person you’d become, and you’d quite like to change that now that everyone had a firm idea of who you were.

It was hard, remembering you were in love with your best friend.

Richie blew out a breath, trying to keep his brain from drifting to Eddie Kaspbrak once again. This part of the feeling he did _not_ miss, not in the slightest. This constant shuffling of his brain back into _I wonder how Eddie’s doing_. He could, ostensibly, _text_ the man, but that would be telling, wouldn’t it? He couldn’t reach out to Eddie because Eddie was at home, in New York, with his _wife_.

And oh, boy, there were a lot of ugly feelings that Richie had about that particular tidbit of information. That little nugget of truth had wormed its way deep into the back of his brain, hissing itself at him every time he reached for his phone to check the group chat. It kept him up at night sometimes, when he would much rather go to sleep and forget about Derry, Maine.

The feelings were his to have, though. He got to feel some kind of way about missed chances and second looks and how obviously unhappy Eddie was. There wasn’t spite, exactly, but hurt manifested itself in anger sometimes, and there wasn’t a psychiatrist alive who would blame him—in Richie’s opinion—about feeling some sort of vindication that Eddie was unhappy with someone else. Someone that wasn’t him.

What did he really have to offer him, though? His hours were irregular and long, his work ethic strenuous to the point of it being called obsessive. He was hardly ever home, hardly ever present in his own life. The longest vacation he’d ever taken, and it was in fucking Derry, trying not to be murdered by a childhood terror.

He lived a half-life, at best, something that put food on the table and a roof over his head and bought him anything he wanted, but he took no joy in something that should have—and was—his dream.

He shoved his glasses to the top of his head, scrubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes. Christ, he needed _actual_ therapy. That was the next step, once he was done helping his parents move. There weren’t actual definable steps, but it was one he knew he needed to take. Drinking himself to sleep every night so he didn’t see Eddie’s shoulder fucking crumpling under a massive serrated leg was not ideal.

Nor was all the baggage that came with remembering a childhood trauma. Sometimes, it took facing it all down to solidify the need for help. He was gonna see a lot of Derry in his mind’s eye for a long time, he had a feeling. He didn’t want to drown it out with a pill coma, though. He wanted to actually face these demons, like he had when he’d come after Pennywise under Neibolt. That part had felt good, like taking the reins again after so, so long in the dark and blind. It was the next step.

He was working on it; sue him. He’d been home less than a month.

They had all returned home with their own scars.

Eddie’s shoulder had taken a beating, looking like he’d been impaled in a car accident, but the Losers had been reassured by the doctors that Eddie would make a full recovery. They’d anticipated that with physio, he’d retain the use of at least ninety percent of his arm’s rotation and reach. He would make it.

None of them gave a real reason for the injury; they claimed they’d been inspecting the old house, like a bunch of dumb teenagers instead of a group of forty-year-olds and the sink hole had caused the damage. It had satisfied the doctors, who retained that same sort of low-level amnesia that Derry seemed to blanket over the adult psyche.

What mattered was that Eddie was going to live.

It had been enough to satisfy Richie, who had left Derry shortly thereafter. It wasn’t his place to moon at Eddie’s bedside and it was too much to process at the moment. He would have done something typically stupid, like blurting out how he felt and Richie was not equipped to handle that right then.

He wondered if anyone had thought to call Eddie’s wife. He swiftly shut down that spiral and shook his head, like he was clearing a Richie-shaped Etch-a-Sketch. It was good that he’d left, if this was his thought process.

He’d packed up his car, driven back to Bangor, and flown back to LA. His only stop had been the kissing bridge, right before he’d blown out of town. He put his penknife to the carving he’d made at fourteen, refreshing it and cementing the idea that Derry hadn’t killed him. It hadn’t killed who he was or who he would be. It hadn’t killed his love for Eddie or Eddie himself. It was enough.

It was a goddamn triumph, considering.

In a way, he was lucky. He knew he was. He’d beaten the worst of the demons, crushed its heart and ended its hold on his life. It was enough, hugging them all goodbye. It was enough, washing the smell of sewer off his skin with water that gurgled down the drain like water should, instead of sounding like dead children’s voices.

They’d all managed to make it out – all save for Stan. That was also sharp and fresh in his memory, like prodding a tooth that had finally come out after being loose for ages. The gap there was startling, starting behind his ribs and making his eyes prickle when he stumbled across it in the dark.

He had seen Eddie last, sitting up in bed and sleepily arguing that he was _not_ going to eat the gelatin, he was _allergic_ —

Richie sucked in a breath, closing his eyes.

Yeah, Richie was lucky. Patty Uris was not. He should call her soon, introduce himself. Maybe he could get some closure for them both, talk about how Stan was as a kid. Maybe she wouldn’t want to talk at all. He knew he should probably try.

He didn’t like to think about it.

So, he didn’t, or he tried not to, pulling the box toward him. It was labeled in Sharpie: **_Class of ’94_**. He knew this was one of his. Probably full of his graduation photos or something, the underachiever who won awards for his schoolwork regardless of whether he tried or not. It left a bitter taste in his mouth. He took his keys to the tape on the flap, the box cutter out of reach on the windowsill behind where he was sitting, his back to the wall.

Turned out he didn’t need it. The tape was old enough that it parted easily beneath the press of his apartment key, and he pulled the flaps of the box open. As he thought, it was mostly graduation things, the shiny fabric of the gown he wore hardly tarnished with its time in a box. He peeled it back, revealing his cap and tassel, the shiny gold plastic of the ‘1994’ dull in the dim sunlight that filtered in through the windows.

His diploma was in here, too, though he had a copy in his office so that he could whip it out as proof he graduated _somewhere_. Didn’t really matter, in his line of work, but the original was nice to have. He set them aside and started to paw through the rest of the box. Pictures, albums of photos his ma took at graduation. He’d have to skim them and peel out the embarrassing ones to drop in the group chat.

Old notebooks were set in the toss pile as an afterthought. All old schoolwork, or lack thereof, dull and uninteresting. A math trophy, hidden from the Losers and tossed in a corner as soon as he got home. Might as well keep it.

He dug deeper as the box got emptier, until his fingers bumped something hard and plastic and he peered down into the corner of the box. A cassette box, complete with tape inside the plastic clamshell, with his own handwriting staring up at him on the spine of the case. One of his mixtapes he made, probably, when he bought his Walkman in junior year. Man, he missed that thing.

He pulled the tape out and flipped it over; maybe it would help him figure out which absolute random mish-mash of songs he was looking at.

_For Eddie_

His breath punched out of his lungs, and he held the case back away from his face, as though afraid it might bite him.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” he gasped out, wheezing the words like it was him who had the placebo inhaler growing up. He hadn’t seen this tape in years, thought it completely buried or lost or trashed (and good riddance). Yet here it was—

He debated what to do with it. There was no donating it; no one used tape decks in the Year of Our Lord 2016, and for another thing, this was way too personal to dump on a charity. He could trash it, but something about the idea made him hesitate, the wafted chemical smell of the plastic faint but still there, pingponging around in his memory. It was joined by the smell of the Barrens on a hot summer day, the faint, ever-present overly sweet scent of rotting vegetation that punctuated a lot of his childhood.

God, this had been such a stupid endeavor, he remembered.

“Talk about ill-advised trips down memory lane,” he muttered, startling himself when it came out of his mouth out loud.

He hesitated, not wanting to toss the tape in the garbage. There were so many memories, so many _feelings_ , buried in that clamshell. He’d meant to give this to Eddie, right before he left. It had been so long ago, but it was like someone had wired his brain directly to 1994 and he could feel the way sweat gathered at his palms and between his fingers, the sound of cicadas screaming as he and Eddie and Mike said their goodbyes at the picnic area before he left Derry for good.

He was eighteen going on forty and he sucked in a hiccupping breath, feeling the years fall away and then close in on him again, like the inhale-exhale of some behemoth animal, drowsing in antiquity. Maybe Maturin himself, though Richie didn’t think the dead turtle would provide answers one way or another.

He fiddled with the tape, spinning the case in his too-big hands.

 _He’s not going to want this_. _He went home to his **wife** , you dipshit._

What was the harm in keeping it for himself? This was a piece of himself he hadn’t been able to share with anyone else, not before or since. He could keep this as a reminder that he’d tried to be true to who he was, and he could do his eighteen-year-old self a favor and remember it when he went to Marv in a couple weeks and told him he’d restart the tour, but only on his own terms. He could write his own stuff, hit or miss, and be happy, or he could let Marv paint him back into his pigeonhole.

God, he’d been so fucking scared. He was still fucking terrified. But he owed it to himself to try.

He wet his lips, and then shoved the tape into his pocket. He’d decide what to do with it once he was out of his parents’ house. There would be less pressure for him to decide in the comfort of his own office. He repacked the box, replacing everything else and setting the box aside. Nothing wrong with keeping what he was keeping.

**_Holding on to hope there, Richie?_ **

He recognized the voice, the cruelty in it nothing new. There was false sympathy there, to draw him in and then snap shut around him like a vise. Funny how his personal demons all seemed to sound like that fucking clown these days. Funny _weird_ , not funny ha-ha. No good chucks to be had around here, not in Trashmouth’s garbage dump brain.

He shook it off, standing up with a crackle of his joints that signified he was, indeed, forty and not eighteen. He repacked what he wanted to keep in the aging cardboard box. It was fine. Things were getting better. He was coping.

Mostly.

He set the box by the door and decided to take a break. It smelled like lunch was almost ready anyway.

* * *

“Smells good, Ma,” he said, stopping in the kitchen beside Maggie Tozier and dropping a kiss to the iron-grey of her hair.

“Trust you to always know when lunch is ready,” she said, turning from the stove. “It’s just soup and sandwiches.”

“Better than three-day-old take out,” he said, stepping to the sink at her sharp look to wash his hands.

“You’re living on three-day-old take out?” Maggie asked. The concern in her voice made him feel a little guilty for the joke.

“Not recently,” he said, grinning at her. “Nope, nothing older than two days for me.”

“Richard,” she said, exasperated.

“Ma,” he parroted back at her.

She sighed. “I just worry.”

“I know,” he said. “I lived this long, though.”

And wasn’t that understatement of the year?

He pulled down bowls out of the cabinet to set the table, ignoring his ma’s aggrieved look. It wasn’t a point of contention, exactly, but she had a tendency to fuss and he had developed a lack of patience for it from everyone in his life save for a specific person. Even then it was more a fond tolerance than anything else.

“Well,” she said, after a moment, before she moved the pot from the stove to the table, setting it on a trivet in the middle of the table. “How’s the guest bedroom decluttering coming?”

“Almost done,” he said. “I’ve got most of the boxes out of the closet and I’m proceeding to Marie Kondo the shit out of it.”

“Richard,” she said.

He shrugged at her. “Eight billion Christmas decorations _do not spark joy_ , Ma.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said. “But you’re not overdoing it, right? You’re saving all the ornaments your grandma gave me?”

“Of course,” Richie said. “Those are all boxed up in the POD already. I packed ‘em with the soft stuff so they won’t get smashed. The stuff I’m talking about is the cheapy glass stuff you keep getting on sale at Target after the season’s over. Ma. Please stop buying stuff covered with glitter. I’m begging you.”

She laughed a little, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair. “That’s why we’re downsizing.”

“Thank god,” Richie huffed. He pulled out her chair for her, dropping another kiss on her head before he pulled out the pitcher of iced tea from the fridge to bring to the table. “Where’s dad?”

“He’s out in the garage. Will you grab him?”

“Sure.” He poked his head out of the attached door, peering into the dimness of the garage. “Pop?”

“Back here.” Wentworth Tozier was packing his tools up, and Richie had a weird sense of deja vu, perhaps sparked from his mental trip back to Derry in the guest bedroom. It was, perhaps, the addition of the smell of metal in the garage, and perhaps the amount of time he’d spent in the garage with his father in Derry, working on the beater car that he’d used to drive from Derry to California, following behind his parents’ truck.

It was staggering, the way the feeling hit him, leaving him punched out and inhaling hard for breath.

He hadn’t thought that this would be what triggered more memories to come flooding in, but here they were, the smell of grease and the hints of motor oil bringing him back to the days when he thought his dad was just okay. Where he was ignored for his father’s practice, his mother’s after dinner and weekend gatherings at church, his family leaving the house quiet and unoccupied, driving him to the Barrens and—

If he put his hand on Went’s shoulder, he was almost sure the Went who stood there would be forty, like him, with none of the signs of age that had settled around his father like a comfortable old jacket.

His father turned toward him, and the moment passed. Went’s older face and wrinkles snapped him back to what was real; it was a reminder that he was here and alive, he’d survived Derry and everything it had thrown at him, past and present. “Mom done with lunch?”

“Yeah,” Richie said. His voice was thick with something that tasted more bitter than nostalgia.

He peered at the myriad of tools, stuck in the limbo that being half-packed brought them. Woodworking and carving, general maintenance and handy things to have, his dad always seemed to have the right tools at hand. It had led to quite the collection over Went’s nearly seven decades alive.

“Holy shit, you still have so many tools. Do you even use them anymore?”

Went looked almost offended. “I can still use a wrench, kid.”

“Pop.” Richie lifted his brows at him. “I dunno how to break it to you, but you got old.”

“Really?” Went looked down at his chest, patting it with a hand that was still youthful looking, despite the spotting of age. “Coulda fooled me, I can still whip your butt, kid.”

Richie gave a giggle of surprised laughter, matching the grin his father gave him. “Take me out behind the shed?”

“You know it,” Went said, socking Richie gently on the arm. “Come on, let’s go get washed up.”

* * *

“So, Bill is going to be here tomorrow to help me get the bulk of the furniture in the POD,” Richie said, sipping at his drink. “That way Pop doesn’t throw his back out. Mike’s gonna meet us in Yuma next week to get the whole shebang unloaded.”

“Rich,” Went said, lifting his brows.

“Pop,” Richie challenged, matching him look for look. “I remember in July you threw your back out by standing up the wrong way. I’m saving your dignity here. You get to order the slightly younger bucks around as a supervisor.”

“I think it’s a fine idea,” Maggie said, putting her hand over Went’s wrist.

It was funny, Richie thought, watching them soften as they looked at each other, Went’s eyes crinkling at the corners. He’d thought he’d understood when he was little, but this? It had really defied his understanding when he was a teenager. He’d seen the love, wanted to grasp it for his own, but then real life had intervened and he’d lost it somewhere.

It was nice seeing it with his parents. They’d been married a long time and Richie felt contentment radiating off of them in waves.

“Get a room, you two,” Richie said, to break up the love fest. He grinned at the identical looks of consternation from his parents, swiping the crust of his sandwich around the inside of his bowl, where a little of his ma’s tomato soup remained. He popped it in his mouth, chewing, before he continued. “As I was saying, don’t worry about the heavy lifting. We got it.”

“Bill and Mike—is it the same Bill and Mike I’m thinking of?” Maggie asked, brow wrinkling as she spoke. “From Derry?”

“You remember?” Richie asked, trying not to lean forward. This might mean something for them, at least in terms of ‘this wasn’t a collective hallucination’ for the Losers.

“Yeah,” Went said, slowly. It was as though he were struggling with the memory. Went had never had issues remembering anything, though and while thirty years of mental blocks were hard to fight through, Richie’s own were dissolved; that meant that his parents were remembering as well, it seemed. “You and those six kids used to get into so much trouble.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, smiling. “My best friends.”

It was true then, and it was true now. He hadn’t stopped talking to them once he left. Text made things easier, and it was nice, feeling close even across the miles.

“Bill and Mike,” Maggie said. “Bill Denbrough. Didn’t he become a writer?”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “He made a movie last year.”

“I remember that, that was our Bill?” Went asked.

“Yep. Beverly Marsh is a fashion designer now.”

“Wait— _that_ Beverly Marsh?” Maggie said, her fingers going to her lips. “I own one of her handbags!”

“Mhm.” Richie swirled his crust through some more soup dregs. “Ben Hanscom is a hot-shot architect now. Fancy buildings were always his thing.”

“Huh. Looks like you all made good on yourselves.” Went chuckled. “What about Stanley and Mike?”

The sandwich paused on its way to Richie’s mouth, and he set it back on the plate. “Mike’s a librarian now. Stan. Uh. Stan passed away.”

“Oh, honey,” Maggie reached out and squeezed his hand, her fingers tiny in his own. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It’s...still a little fresh,” Richie admitted. “I went back to Derry last month, remember? We all met up for dinner and, uh. We found out then.”

His mother squeezed his hand again.

“Was there a reunion?” Went asked.

“You could say that,” Richie said carefully. “We went back for a reason.”

He paused, looking his parents over. He knew that some people would need to know; he’d still need to tell the Losers what he’d told them, to keep their stories straight.

“Mike. You remember Mike Hanlon? He became the town librarian,” Richie said. “Well, the guy that bullied us as kids. Henry Bowers?”

“The one they sent to Juniper Hill?” Maggie asked, her eyes wide.

“Yeah, him. He offed his dad that summer, had a lot of shit wrong with him.” Richie pulled his glasses off and rubbed a hand across his face, the sound of the tomahawk entering Henry’s skull not one he was liable to forget any time soon. He didn’t regret it, but that didn’t mean he had to _like_ it, either. “We got word from Mikey, he reached out to us. Henry had busted out of Juniper Hill, and had been prowling around. The police were involved, it was a shitshow.”

“Oh my god,” Maggie said. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah, he’s all right now, but Henry had a real fixation on him,” Richie said, smoothing over what really happened with a palatable lie. He had learned, through teenaged summers of sneaking out and swiping beer that this was the best way to make a lie work; you give a lie a kernel of truth and it made everything easier to swallow. “Henry was watching us when we met up, the six of us. He broke into the Inn and he—”

Richie swallowed.

“He hurt Eddie. Got him good in the cheek with a knife, broke his shoulder.”

“Oh,” Maggie said, her fingers to her lips again, but for another reason entirely. “Is Eddie—”

“He’s gonna recover,” Richie said, his voice carefully neutral. “He was pretty touch and go for a while there, until the paramedics arrived.”

Also, the truth. His parents didn’t need to know how he’d screamed for him, though. The raw panic was still fresh, bubbling beneath the surface. It was bad enough talking about it with them. Went’s face looked like a thundercloud, his strong brows drawn down in a scowl that was much like Richie’s own.

“Was Bowers...what happened?” Wentworth’s hand clenched on the table between them.

Richie loved his parents, in that moment, probably more than he ever had as a teenager. The town had taken what might have been a close family bond, stifling it as Pennywise tried to separate him from the sources of support that he had. Now, he and his parents shared a relationship that he’d craved as a kid.

It was a little overwhelming.

“He ended up dying before they could take him into custody,” Richie said. He flicked his eyes between his parent’s shocked faces, taking another sip of his tea. “He went after someone else, they called it self-defense.”

“My god,” Went said. “I’m glad Eddie’s all right.”

“Me, too,” Richie said. He scrubbed a hand across his face again. “It was...Jesus, it was awful.”

That was not a lie, and it wasn’t wrong, either. Richie was more than glad to have it over and done with, even if he was still dealing with the fallout. It just meant that Pennywise couldn’t cause further harm.

Maggie’s fingers stroked through his hair again, and Richie let out a shuddering sigh. This was what he’d been missing. So many of his formative years left barren with parents who cared, but were shoved into the mold of neglectful distance by forces outside any of their control.

“I’m all right, Ma,” he said.

“You’re shaking, Rich,” she said, and he realized it was true. He took a deep breath, flattening his palms against the table to still their traitorous tremors.

“Any...uh. Anyway. I just.” He took another breath. “I came to a lot of realizations while I was out there, the least of which is that hiding who I am is kind of stupid, what with how short life is.”

“What do you mean?” His mother asked him. He kept his eyes closed, focused on the sensation of her fingers gently untangling the curling mess of his hair.

“When Eddie got hurt,” Richie said. “You remember how close we were?”

“You were inseparable,” Went said. Richie could hear the smile in his voice, even with his eyes so tightly shut. He pushed his glasses up on top of his head so he could knuckle at his eyes. Talking about it, even roundabout with his parents, was exhausting.

“Yeah,” Richie said. “I...I loved him.”

“Of course you did—” Maggie began, but Richie shook his head.

“No, Ma. You don’t get it. I was in love with him. I’m—I’m gay.” He let out a breath. “I’ve known since high school.”

There was a long silence, it stretched out long enough that Richie pulled his glasses back down onto his face and opened his eyes, peering at his parents. They looked back at him with a sort of patient expectation, clearly waiting on him to be finished.

“And...I remembered how it felt,” he said. “To be in love with Eddie. It wasn’t a bad thing.”

_It’s not a bad thing. Not if I mean it. Not if it’s still there. It’s not. It’s **not**._

It isn’t.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Maggie said. Richie’s eyes snapped to her face, but she was smiling. “Richie, honey, we _love_ you. That’s not going to change.”

He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Really?”

“Of course not,” Went said. “Explains a lot of your stand-up, though.”

Richie made a face. “Yeah, about that. I need to call my agent back. I think...I need to do some rewrites.”

Maggie squeezed his hand. “Change can be good.”

“God, I hope so,” Richie said.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, instead, rising and taking her plate to the sink. She returned shortly after, dropping a kiss to his forehead and cupping his cheeks in her palms as he looked up at her. “I just wish you realized that telling us these things wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Ma,” Richie said, his voice thick. “I only recently admitted this shit to myself, much less anyone else. You guys are the first.”

“What about Eddie?” Went asked.

“He’s married,” Richie said, giving a hollow sounding laugh. “Has a wife and a house and a high-powered office job. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’s straight as an arrow. Easier to admit it to myself and move on.”

Went frowned, but he didn’t elaborate on what he was thinking. Instead, he reached out and squeezed Richie’s shoulder. Richie inhaled, sharp and quiet.

“You’re gonna be okay?” Went asked.

“Eventually,” Richie said, for once not minding how he leaned into his father’s touch. “I always am.”

* * *

**October 1989 — Derry, Maine**

Richie barked his knuckles against the door to the house as he hurried inside.

“Fuck,” he hissed, sticking the bruised knuckle in his mouth and laving at the torn skin with his tongue. “Bastard.”

He shook his hand, flapping it until the sting subsided. He had a mission and only a short time to do it. His parents were gone for the weekend, but they’d said that the Losers could use the den as a flop spot until they returned. It wasn’t rare that Went and Maggie took these trips, but usually Richie was dragged along — this was the first time he’d been allowed to remain behind. Maybe it had something to do with how quiet he’d been the last few weeks, since the summer.

They had all been quiet, everyone settling into a routine of not talking about It. The thing beneath Neibolt. But it was all there, stamped over their faces as they looked at each other. The fresh scars on their hands were nothing compared to what each of them was dealing with, and it had been obvious from the start.

Richie’s solution? A rager of a house party. By that he meant movies, stolen beer, popcorn and a sleepover with everyone — even Eddie and Bev.

Bev’s aunt was staying in town and closing down her father’s affairs, seeing about his burial, so that left Bev with plenty of time to get into trouble, in Richie’s opinion. She’d been given permission to stay, just not overnight, and they were going to walk her back by curfew. It was enough, and no one felt like testing those boundaries, not when they had so little time left with Bev as it was. Richie didn’t want to think about it, so he steadfastly didn’t as he started pulling snacks out.

Sonia had been cowed by Eddie’s outburst when he’d run off to join them, and it hadn’t faded as the hot summer air gave way to the cooler nip of fall. She hadn’t objected to Eddie coming on their outings, or Eddie simply hadn’t told her. Either way, he didn’t seem too fussed about what his mother thought for now. It was freedom to Eddie, and Richie could see it in his face.

Assertiveness had always been a good look for Eddie. Now? It was downright heady, watching Eddie’s chin lift when he wanted something, demanding it with those too-dark eyes and that firm line that his mouth settled into as he made his wants known.

His arm was still in the cast, and would be for a while, but he was out with them far more than he normally would be. He was still the same careful Eddie, and yet, he wasn’t.

None of them were the same. Not even Richie.

Maybe that was what had decided him. He jiggled the plastic bag that held his prize, tumbling into the rumpus room and pulling out Went’s collection of records. He flipped through them, fingers skimming the dust jackets until he found the record he wanted.

Richie hissed out a successful noise of discovery, plucking the record out of the collection and pulling it from its jacket. Elvin Bishop. Yeah. That’s what he wanted.

He dove for his backpack, grabbing his Walkman, and then went for the plastic bag he’d left by the turntable. He set the record on the spindle, starting up the rotation just like his pop had shown him hundreds of times before. Before he dropped the needle, however, he pulled the bag closer.

Inside was a pack of blank cassette tapes, wrapped in cellophane. He peeled out the first one, popping it into the Walkman. He’d found an old microphone at the thrift store, and it worked with his Walkman, so he was gonna do this old school.

He set the microphone by the speaker, making sure there wasn’t feedback.

“Perfect,” he said.

He looked around himself, guilty even though he was alone. Who was here to see him? Who, indeed?

He remembered the Capitol, the frantic screaming run across the park. He remembered, and he hated it. He knew that It was gone, that they’d probably killed It, but the scar on his hand throbbed anyway. It was probably dead.

Probably was different from definitely, his brain helpfully whispered.

That was quite enough of that, Richie decided. Beep-fuckin’-beep. He snapped the cassette into the Walkman, set up the mic, and pressed record, dropping the needle.

_I must have been through about a million girls_

_I'd love 'em and I'd leave 'em alone_

_I didn't care how much they cried, no sir_

_Their tears left me cold as a stone_

Richie backed away, hands raised, as though to dare any of the delicate set-up to fuck up. When it didn’t, he raced into the kitchen, grabbing bowls of snacks and drinks and bringing them back into the rumpus room. He started setting things out, bumping around as he waited for the song to finish. Maybe he could get another one in before everyone got there.

_'Cause I fooled around, I fooled around, I fooled around..._

_Fooled around and fell in love..._

“R-R-Richie!” Bill called from outside.

“Fuck!” It was just above a whisper, but he winced as he dove for the turntable. Richie scrambled for the Walkman’s recorder, stopping the tape and then jerking the needle upright.

Bill clattered into the house not long after, bearing a stack of VHS tapes.

“They h-h-had _Day of the Dead_ ,” Bill said. He’d been in charge of movies for tonight. He took in Richie’s guilty look, then glanced at the turntable. “Am I interrupting?”

“Just making a mixtape for your mom, Big Bill,” Richie said, setting the Walkman down and stopping the turntable’s rotation. Bill rolled his eyes, but the ruse worked. It was just Richie being Richie, fooling around with his dad’s music in his down time. “I wanna see if Stan throws up when they pull that one dude apart.”

“He w-w-won’t. He’ll hit you.”

“Bet.” Richie held out his hand, and Bill shook it, their knuckles creaking. Richie put away the records and he and Bill bickered over snack placement until the others arrived. He’d just have to finish it later. It could wait...just hopefully not too long, or he’d lose his nerve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. Here we go. This is the first fic I think I have ever plotted from start to finish, and it WILL be finished.
> 
> ANYWAY.
> 
> So, those of us who grew up back when fucking mixtapes were like, the height of fucking 'hey I like you' will remember what a Big Deal this was. This was tantamount to a prom invite, or even to a 'let's plan a future together because we're stupid kids and this is what being in love feels like'. Hopefully, I can capture that sort of yearning, because I still remember it vividly. Let me know if you feel it too.
> 
> There is, in fact, a spotify link to this, and you can find the built playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5oAj5MoB3Bh1oW6CCiWd1a?si=CIrirqftRcu5AdyQzfarhA). My recommendation is that you _hold off on listening_ until the very end, but by all means, drown yourself in feelings early if you like. I might have a breakdown of the song choices after the end of the fic, if there's interest and you'd like the insight.
> 
> Side note: I love Went and Maggie Tozier, and I'm hoping you'll love my iteration too. I don't think, based on what I pulled from the book and from the miniseries, that they're abusive toward Richie. They're distant in that way that Pennywise cultivates, Derry itself meaning to isolate children from their support systems to make them easy prey. Went and Richie joke, but I don't think Went would ever actually raise a hand toward Richie, and he grew up in a fairly well-adjusted home, considering it was Derry.
> 
> Thanks for listening to me ramble, Constant Readers. I hope you enjoy.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t _want_ a divorce,” Myra said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter: Casual mentions of suicidal ideations, swearing, sexism (mostly in Eddie-outbursts, but they're there.)

**New York — November 2016**

“I don’t _want_ a divorce,” Myra said.

Eddie sighed, setting down the plastic fork he was using to dig out bits of salad from the plastic clamshell it came in. He used his good hand—and wasn’t that a bitch, that he had a _good hand_ now—to rub his forehead.

“Myra,” he said, with far more patience than he probably could muster without the aid of opiates (and oh, if that didn’t say something about his normal state of being, said a quiet, cruel voice in the back of his head). “I’ve already said that this would be amicable for you.”

“You don’t—“ Myra swallowed, in that thick way she had, the way that indicated that she was going to cry. She sounded like she was chugging molasses. Her throat was closing up and she got squinty, dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. Eddie hated that sound, it was so _wet_ and it made his skin crawl because he knew that she’d used it far more often than not to make him agree, to make him _give in_. It was a tactic he hated and he recognized it for what it was now, instead of for what he thought it to be—that she was just overwhelmed with her need to take care of him, because that was her job as his wife.

Now he recognized it as another way to keep control.

“You don’t even want to try?”

Eddie had not been coherent enough for this conversation when he’d arrived home from Derry a month ago. A month ago he slept more than he was awake, his dreams blessedly blank memories when he woke to eat and drink and take the odd shower. He remembered nightmares, but never what they were about.

It had been to his benefit, then, that he’d moved into their downstairs guest bedroom. No going up the stairs, no strenuous lifting. It was to aid in his recovery, and that part was true, but it was also to allow him that distance, that space, from Myra while he decided what he wanted to do.

He had spent the last two months building up his recovery, sleeping and eating and sleeping, and his doctors were more than pleased with his progress. He worked on his rotational exercises, his daily physio appointments dropping to weekly. Soon, they said, he might not need them at all.

It was bullshit, but he let them talk about it. Maybe it gave them hope, he didn’t know. The sling that bound his arm chafed at his neck but it kept him from pulling his shoulder too much. He was going slightly stir-crazy. He took small walks around the house, sitting down when he was winded. To the living room and back again, over and over.

It was exactly one hundred and forty steps, round trip. He could try going to his study to extend it, but right now he needed his energy for this. He needed to focus on getting his life in order at this moment. His health would come, or it wouldn’t. For now, he was going to look at what he could control, rather than fret about what he couldn’t.

It was so much braver than he’d been six months ago, and far more laser-focused.

Ideally, this would have gone nice and easy, but life—his life especially—wasn’t ideal. He’d spent the last month of coherency, when he could snatch it and Myra wasn’t hovering, to get his affairs in order. Contacting lawyers, separating and gathering up his finances, deciding what was to be divided up and how.

No one mentioned that most of the ‘hard’ part of getting divorced was not the dissolution of the relationship of itself, it was peeling the tendrils of the entire thing away from him, like suckers of some kind of many-tentacled squid, wrapped around him and dragging him into the dark. One by one by one, each phase was another loosening, and he felt he could breathe easier.

He hadn’t bought another inhaler; his refills went unused.

Another tentacle fell away, and he pushed his way to the surface.

He was deeply unhappy in this life, and really, that was partially his own fault, he thought. He’d allowed it to get this bad. He’d allowed himself to sink into this sort of comfortable mediocrity. He had felt that instant comfort with Myra that he realized now was familiarity. He was _used_ to the way she babied him, made a big deal of each of his fears; it was Sonia all over again, soft hands that pushed him down onto the bed and told him to _rest_ , because he was _delicate_.

He’s not like other boys, his mother said. He couldn’t do those things.

_That’s not true. I can_ **_run_ ** _. I can jump forty feet into the quarry, make a splash and come up screaming because it’s cold as a witch’s tit. I can put a spear through a clown’s face. I can_ **_save_ ** _my_ **_friends_ ** _._

_I’m braver than this. I can do this._

Going back to Derry had upended a lot of things, had woken them all up. Shaken them like a snowglobe, the small pieces of their personalities flying up in bits of memory. It was as if Pennywise had kept them in a sort of torpor, forcing them into well-known ruts until It was ready to wake and feed upon them.

He could see it in the others, too. Richie was making noises in the group chat about writing his own material now. Bill had finished up the ending to his book, and it had been received well, by all accounts. Mike had already started making plans to do the rounds, driving to New York before heading to Chicago to see Ben and Beverly and continuing on to California to meet up with Bill and Richie.

It made sense that he was waking up, too. Healing made him restless, but it was _more_.

Tired of being a passenger, passive in his own life, taking these steps were going to be disruptive. It felt like breathing unaided, without the battery acid sting of albuterol to take air into his lungs. It felt like freedom, like running through the Barrens with the sun on his back and his friends ahead of him, shrieking as they plunged into the cold water of the quarry.

Burning down his life would leave smoldering ruins, he should have known. It was up to him to strike the match. He held the box in his hands, turning it over and over in his mind. 

Back in the present, in the now, he picked up his fork again. Carefully used it to fold over the lettuce leaf he’d been poking at and stabbed it through. Not even a satisfying crunch. The leaves were limp from the heat in the room, turned up high because the chill rolling through New York was real and _you’ve always been prone to catching colds, Eddie, dear—_

“Myra, this isn’t working for me anymore,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you other than that. Everything I say, you have an answer for, as though you can...you can fix it. You can’t. I don’t want to fix things. What I want is to end the marriage. I’m not...happy.”

“You’ve changed, I don’t like it,” Myra said. She squeezed her hands together, wringing a tissue between them like she was trying to draw blood from it. “Ever since you came back from that...reunion, or whatever it was. You’ve been so _cold_ , Eddie.”

“I’ve just—” Eddie caught himself before he backslid into placating her with an empty promise. Words were not for that, not anymore. He had to be vocal about what he wanted. “Myra. I’ve had a life-altering injury. I was almost killed when that house collapsed, I told you. It made me think long and hard about where my life was at.”

“You’re on a lot of painkillers, Eddie, dear,” she said.

Eddie blew a long sigh out of his nose. “The last Vicodin I took was over sixteen hours ago.”

While he was sore, he didn’t think it was worth popping another one of those little pills and floating away again. He’d spent so much of his life cordoned off into a little Eddie-shaped box, checked out of whatever path his life had taken.

When the idea of it being his medication that was making him _like this_ was rebuked, Myra’s lips thinned. Eddie knew it was because he was easier to handle when he was doped. Anyone would be, but especially Eddie. He knew he was stubborn, and that the vicodin and percocet and diazepam made him easier to deal with.

Fuck that.

“You still won’t tell me what _happened_ ,” Myra said, changing tactics. “You keep giving me little tidbits, as though it will explain everything. Who are these people that lured you back to your hometown and into a _collapsing house_?”

Her voice took on a shrill pitch, climbing upward as she spoke, as though it was inconceivable to her that he would ever go back. Honestly, the Eddie of six months ago would never have done such a thing. He might have daydreamed about it, if he’d been aware that it was a possibility for him, but he would have never done it himself.

_You’re braver than you think._

_Yeah. Thanks, Rich._

And perhaps, from the outside, it was crazy. From the inside, where Eddie was sitting with a busted shoulder, half a house salad with light dressing because Myra insisted it would give him heartburn and a sobbing wife by his bedside—

It still sounded crazy.

He sighed, stabbing hard into the leaves of lettuce. He didn’t even want them anymore. They were soggy and unappetizing, but it gave his hands something to do.

He had done the right thing. It was telling that even Myra’s wheedling couldn’t convince him otherwise. Going back to Derry had been the _right thing to do_. Despite the pain, the terror, it had been correct, and the first time he’d felt alive in almost twenty-seven years. It hadn’t even occurred to him to decline Mike’s request.

He had promised. Back when he was young, wild, and infinitely more free. He wanted that back. He wanted to run, to feel the breeze pushing back his hair and threading down his back as the Losers whooped down the street. It had felt like flying.

Eddie dragged the head of a match over the strike paper in his mind, watched it burst into orange and yellow, the heat singeing his fingers.

“Myra, do you really want to know what happened, or do you just want to justify trying to coddle me through this recovery in the hopes that I won’t still want a divorce on the other side?” He set the fork to the side.

“Eddie!” she gasped, as though he’d reached across and slapped her hard across the face. It might be kinder, he thought, and that was uncharitable. It was true, though. He was a mean bastard when he wanted to be, and right now, he wanted to be.

Let her hate him; she was going to loathe him when this was over. He had offered the easy way out. Now it was time to be difficult, to make it impossible for her to deny this.

“Myra,” he parroted back, leveling a stare at her. “Is that not what we’re doing here?”

Her eyes were welling up, but Eddie had long since become tired of the sight of Myra going blotchy with tears. She twisted the napkin tight in her hands, and Eddie thought again he might see blood well between the fleshy pads of her fingers, wrought by her fretting.

“I just wish we could talk like we used to!” she blurted.

Eddie frowned, his brows pinching. “We didn’t really talk.”

“Didn’t we? You used to come home and tell me about your day, I used to tell you about mine.”

“No, I bitched about someone being incompetent at work and you would tell me all about how Stephanie at your book club was having an affair with her pool boy,” Eddie said. “None of it was a real deep connection.”

“But—” Myra dabbed at her eyes again. 

“Do you really want to hear about Eric in accounting’s massive fuck up? Do you really care?” Eddie asked, rubbing his forehead. “Does that bring you some measure of satisfaction? It’s bullshit, Myra. It’s all bullshit. Let me tell you, I don’t give a fuck about Stephanie fucking the pool boy. Honestly, good for her. If she’s happy, who gives a fuck, other than her husband? He should divorce her, but then again, I’m biased. It’s not your business, but you love making it your business.”

Myra reeled back. Her mouth hung open, and Eddie felt satisfaction, mixed with shame. This wasn’t something that was _done_ , bringing all their dirty laundry to light. No, you tolerated it, and _tolerated_ it, **_tolerated_ ** it until you finally went out and bought a shotgun, stuck it in your mouth, and pulled the trigger with your toes.

_No, officer, I had no idea he was unhappy._ _We’d been married for so long, he was so quiet—_

“Do you really have nothing better to do? No actual hobbies? Did I sink fifteen thou into remodeling that sewing room for you not to fucking use it?”

They both knew she hadn’t been in there in months. Low blow, Eddie. He dropped the match on a pile of documents. Marriage license. Mortgage. Car notes. Credit card bills.

“This isn’t like you, at all,” she said. “You’ve never been like this before!”

“That’s because the person I was six months ago wasn’t really ready for a logical leap like this,” Eddie said. He pushed the limp lettuce around with his fork again. “I’m doing better than I was. I need to do this, and you should understand that better than anyone. We’re not good for each other.”

“We could go to couple’s counseling! It would help!”

“Really? Or would it give you more insight into what makes me insecure and use that to keep me here?” Eddie said. He fished around in the salad container for something to do, though he didn’t drop his gaze from Myra. “Remember what you said when I told you I was going?”

Myra’s lip wobbled.

“Can you remember? Or was it what you thought I wanted to hear?” he asked.

“Eddie—”

“It was more of the same, like this,” he said. “What is it about me wanting to go home for a little while—to keep a promise, no less—that makes you absolutely lose your mind?”

“I feel like you’re lying to me!”

_That’s because I am._ Eddie felt that right in his sternum, just to the right of where his shoulder throbbed. Shame welled up in him, hot and blinding, and he leaned back into the pillows that supported his upright position.

It wasn’t as though he couldn’t tell her, he thought. She wouldn’t believe him. But he could tell her.

“Look,” he said with a sigh, rubbing his pinched brows. “Do you want the truth?”

“Of course I do!” she said.

“All right,” Eddie said. “When we were kids, we made a promise to Bill—Bill Denbrough. We promised him that we would come back, and we would help him out. We were teenagers, I’d just turned thirteen.”

He put his fork down, reaching for the glass of mineral water at the bedside table.

“We went through a shared trauma,” he said. “His brother, George. Georgie. He died the previous fall, but we didn’t know exactly what happened. He spent the summer looking for answers. We could have given him all the answers we could think of, but it wouldn’t have stopped Bill. He was just—god, I don’t know. He was relentless. But we loved him. We all did.”

They all do, he amended in his head. Big Bill Denbrough, his oldest friend. While Bill and Richie were closer, it was still Bill who looked after all of them. Their oldest brother, by birth order and by nomination. The leader.

God, he missed the Losers.

Myra’s eyes were wet and huge in her face, as though she couldn’t believe he would really tell her what was going on. He took a long drink of his water, letting it settle in his stomach. It was strange, how distant he felt from his old adult life, as though the house he paid for and the bed he sat in right now were just a product of one long, hot, and terrifying summer. In a way, they were.

Maybe it was a side effect of the memory fog lifting. Old patterns burned away like mist in the sunshine, and he’d found a new path to tread.

“We were a group of seven that summer. Bill, myself, Richie, Mike, Bev, Ben and...and Stan.”

Eddie swallowed another drink of water, pushing the lump of grief back down into his chest where he could dissect it later, with Myra out of the room.

“I went down into the sewers for the first time, back then.” Eddie’s voice was far calmer than it would have been six months ago. “My friends and I, we found out what happened to Georgie that fall. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. We spent that summer terrified by a shapeshifting, child-eating clown.”

“You’re making fun of me, Eddie.” Myra’s brows drew down into a scowl.

“I can assure you, I’m not,” Eddie replied. “What happened to us was very real. Two months ago, Mike Hanlon called us back to Derry because the clown came back. It started eating kids again. We didn’t stop it like we thought the first time.”

“Eddie!” Myra’s voice went up an octave, as though Eddie doubling down on what he was telling her was a personal affront. “That’s enough!”

“No, it isn’t,” Eddie replied. It was interesting, watching her try to absorb the truth he was telling her and rejecting it as him making fun of her. “Do you remember? I didn’t talk a lot about my childhood. Even when asked direct questions, I could never really answer.”

“Well, yes, that’s because—”

“Because I’ve been living in a...like a brain fog. I went back to Derry and everything cleared up. I remember growing up. I remember my childhood. I remember my friends. And I remember why I need to stand up for myself.”

Because he’s braver than he thought.

“When I was thirteen, I broke my arm. Remember the x-ray I had when we were rear ended outside of Syracuse? Right after our honeymoon.”

Not that it had been much of a honeymoon. He’d been wheedled into spending the weekend with Myra’s parents at their summer house up there, old money like ‘talking about vacationing like people still went to the Poconos on vacation’ kind of old money. No mention of traveling, just Myra and her mother Caroline fussing over how delicate he was while he tried to prove he wasn’t by doing odd jobs around the house.

Fuck. He almost threw the rest of the salad at the wall with the memory. Instead, he took a breath.

“Remember how I said I didn’t remember breaking my arm? I do, now. It was that same fucking house. The one on the corner of Neibolt Street. I fell through the second floor, down into the kitchen, and landed on it funny.”

“You’re trying to piece together something that happened a long time ago, Eddie—” Myra started.

Eddie shook his head, waving his good hand. “No, Myra, I remember now. That fucking clown pulled Itself out of the fucking fridge like it was a can of Play-Doh. He had claws as long as my hand and he was going to eat me, but he wanted to hear me scream first. Kept snapping at my face. God, so many teeth—”

_Eddie. Eddie. Eddie-Eddie-Eds, look at me. Look at me! I’m not gonna let it get you, **look at me**! _

He felt nauseous, but it felt good to...remember, and know that the fucking thing was dead.

“I’ve spent my whole fucking life being told I should hold back, avoid everything, be afraid. I beat that fucking clown twice, killed it with my own two fucking hands, and I’m sure as hell not going to let it stop me now.” He looked at her, as though it was the first time again. She was staring at him like he’d grown a second head. “We went back down there, when I went back. We crawled into the sewer standpipe under Neibolt and hunted that thing down in Its lair. We beat the shit out of It and It stabbed me through the shoulder, tossing me into the wall. That’s what happened to me. I was saving my best friend’s life and got stabbed through the shoulder doing it. It crushed my collarbone, It broke my shoulder.”

“Why are you lying?” she asked.

“I’m not.” Eddie put down his clamshell, finally. 

“Stop it!” Myra said. She tossed her napkin down on the tray table. “If you didn’t want to tell me, you could have—you could have just said so! Instead of making up stories!”

“That’s the worst part, Myra—I’m not making things up,” Eddie said. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, eyes intense and ringed with bruises. “If I wanted to lie to you, I could come up with something way more plausible than Pennywise the fucking Dancing Clown!”

“What you’re telling me is impossible!”

“Maybe because you don’t want to believe me, but I can assure you that it happened.” Eddie leaned back, pushing the tray table off his legs and beside him onto the bed. “Just because you don’t like the answer doesn’t mean I’m lying to you. I didn’t leave you abruptly to have an affair.”

Myra looked guilty; he had been drifting in and out of sleep, but he’d heard her in the hall weeks before, talking to someone, worried that it meant he’d been cheating on her. It was an ugly way to bring things to the fore, but here they were.

“Yeah, I heard that conversation. If I wanted to sneak around, I would be far more organized and I think you know that. You don’t need to look into adultery. New York is a no-fault state. I looked into it.”

“Mother was right about you!” she snapped.

“Which time?” he snapped back. “Just, you know, for fucking clarification, Myra, because you call her to complain about me when I don’t fold my fucking socks to your standards!”

“I—”

“No, don’t deny it, because I’ll pull the fucking cell phone bill and we’ll _really_ get down to the nuts and bolts of why this marriage is a fucking nightmare, Myra.” Eddie’s hand slashed out, his good arm gesturing where his bum shoulder wouldn’t let him. He still felt fuzzy, but this anger was hot and bubbling, buried beneath five years of resentment on the back burner. “When I want fucking _Caroline Schaefer’s_ opinion on my life and my choices, I’ll jam my hand right up her dusty, dry—”

“Edward Kaspbrak!” she shrieked, tipping the little folding table over as she stood. “I won’t—I won’t stand here and let you talk to me like that!”

“Door’s right there, Myra, you’re the one insisting on working things out,” he said. It was uncharitable. He knew it. But it was also how he’d been feeling. It was enough. It was _enough_.

He let the match fall from his hand, tumbling end over end onto his life.

He’d be warm from the ashes long after he’d moved on.

Myra stormed off, slamming the bedroom door behind her. Eddie let out a breath, feeling his throat closing. He breathed. In and out, in and out. Slow, steady. After a moment, it passed. Instead of reaching for his inhaler—

_You don’t have that, remember? You burned it._

—he reached for his phone. The group chat was hidden from Myra, pushed behind a ton of other notifications, pressed back into a corner behind games he didn’t play, loaded onto the phone when Bill bought him the backup and brought it to him in the hospital. He hadn’t replaced it yet.

He had no idea how he was going to broach the subject.

_Hey, guys, I think I just pushed my wife into divorce. Now what? I guess...I need someone to help me apartment hunt?_

No, he didn’t. He could do that just fine on his own. The little townhome he and Myra owned would belong to her, most likely. She’d demand it. The lawyer he’d spoken to had told him to live there until they’d reached an agreement about separation of finances, but it was likely the house would be a breakpoint. That was fine. He didn’t feel an attachment to the place. To anything here.

He’d paid the retainer for a reason.

It was more the problem of broaching the subject.

How did he tell the Losers?

He’d never had those types of friends to lean on when he’d left Derry. Reaching out meant letting someone in, letting them see him and he didn’t...do that. He was the type-A asshole who pushed his way into his job, assertive and dickish, he didn’t make friends. Not friends he needed to keep. He had acquaintances at his job, coworkers. People who were at his wedding but didn’t work for his company anymore. They were icons on Linkedin and Glassdoor, nothing tangible.

Not like the Losers. People he didn't even know he missed, right up until he found them again.

His thumbs paused on the screen. How to tell them. He had no idea how long he sat there, his phone in his hands. The screen timed out a couple of times, forcing him to reactivate it and navigate back to the window.

He was saved from his dithering when the message blipped in, right under his fingers. Bev, in all caps.

_GROUP CALL. NOW._

His phone started to buzz, the ringer turned down even as he fumbled to answer. What the hell? He brought the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Eddie!” Bev said. “I have news, but I need everyone in here.”

One by one, the Losers joined in. Mike and Bill, then Richie, mumbling a sleepy greeting.

“Ben’s in the back with me,” she said. “How quickly can all of you be in Georgia?”

“Georgia?” Richie said, yawning. “What’s goin’ on—”

“Seriously, we need to be there in a couple of days,” Bev said. “I just got in touch with Patty.”

Stan’s wife. Eddie felt himself go a little cold.

“What’s up, Bevvie?” Richie asked again. “Did she—”

“Stan’s alive.” Bev’s voice was shaky, thick and watery. “Patty says he’s stable now, he’ll be ready for visitors soon. We should. We should all go.”

Eddie felt his hand go numb, tightening around the phone. He let out a little wheeze.

“Eddie?” 

He coughed. “I’m fine. Fine. I need to see about...plane tickets. This weekend?”

“Yeah,” Mike chimed in. “I’ll pack and start driving down. We got a hotel in mind?”

“I’ll text you the details,” Bev said. “I just didn’t think this was news to be dropped into chat.”

“Hell yeah it wasn’t,” Richie said. He let out a whoop, and it was like the tension broke on the surface of the water. They all laughed, a relieved ripple through the group.

By the time he hung up, he’d forgotten to give them the news. But it didn’t matter. He was going to Georgia. Stan was alive. Eddie wiped at his eyes and pulled up his search engine. He needed to get packing.

He could tell them in person.

All of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gee, Eddie, people with asthma don't generally get prescribed vicodin and percocet!
> 
> As an aside, this is far tamer than the way Eddie speaks to Myra in the book. I'm trying to strike that balance, but god. This is not a healthy relationship, and shouldn't be expected to be one.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me, Constant Readers. It's been hell the last couple of weeks. We keep losing people at work and that means I have to shore up the gaps with overtime.


End file.
